Only Ever Yours is a feminist dystopia which builds on the heritage of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In the novel, we follow sixteen-year-old freida who lives in a dystopian society in which only male babies are born naturally; female babies are designed and grown in laboratories. As a result of this, girls and women – referred to as “eves” in the novel – are viewed as inferior, and this is clearly reflected in their names: male names are capitalized, whereas female names are not. Furthermore, girls
and women are viewed as possessions that are present to please boys and men; they are not supposed to have any will of their own, and their bodies are viewed as men’s property. Additionally, females are supposed to be perfect in both behavior as well as appearance. Obedience, pleasantness, and docility are qualities that all “good girls” should possess, and this is exemplified through the messages that are continuously repeated over the loudspeakers when the girls are asleep: “I am a good girl. I am pretty. I am always happy-go-lucky. […] I am a good girl. I am appealing to others. I am always agreeable” (O'Neill, 2014, p. 4). This conditioning is reminiscent of the hypnopaedias in Huxley’s Brave New World, where children are exposed to messages suitable for their caste while sleeping: “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas” (Huxley, 1932/2007, p. 22).
The protagonist freida lives in a girls-only boarding school, where their classes train them in skills that women need to know in this society in order to fulfill one of three roles: wife, concubine, or chastity (guardian and teacher of the young girls in the boarding school). At the end of the year in which they turn 16, the girls are assigned roles; in freida’s class, ten will become wives, and the remaining twenty will become either concubines or chastitites. The young men who will be the husbands decide which girls they want as wives, and as this is the most sought-after female role in society, there is fierce competition between the girls to become popular with the boys. There are strict rules of behavior imposed on the girls, but freida violates these rules towards the end of the novel in a desperate attempt to save herself.
In terms of the issues discussed in section 4.2, social organization and conformity are most pronounced in O’Neill’s novel. Women’s different roles are clearly defined with specific duties and behavioral patterns which leave no room for individuality, choice or agency – docility and obedience are crucial if women wish to remain unpunished as members of society. This means that conformity is a crucial part of the social organization of the novel. This becomes particularly obvious when freida is waiting for punishment for her transgression of the rules. Other women in the society are her most ardent critics, and what they condemn is her lack of obedience:
She is an eve. She was designed to meet a purpose and she has been trained for the last sixteen years to perform in a way that meets that purpose. […] Any deviation from that is unacceptable. This freida has failed in her duty. She has no defence (O'Neill, 2014, p. 336)
Even though freida’s rebellion is more an act of desperation to save herself, she nevertheless becomes a dangerous rebel by breaking the rules. By acting in this way she becomes a subject with wishes and needs instead of a docile object – which is her real crime and why society needs to punish her.
The didactic potential of O’Neill’s novel is linked to social organization and conformity, with a particular feminist focus. The novel could be discussed in relation to young women’s roles in contemporary society and the influence of social media on the sustained importance of appearances. The novel’s language is not too complex, which means that most upper secondary students should be able to read it. However, as Only Ever Yours is the most violent, brutal, and explicit of the four I have chosen, it might not be suitable in all contexts.
4.5 Concluding remarks
This chapter has discussed the origins, definitions, and characteristics of contemporary dystopian YA fiction, including the roots of YA literature and dystopian literature for adults. The main focus, however, has been on dystopian literature for YA after 2000, central issues addressed in these works, and the genre’s didactic potential in the Norwegian context. The four novels selected for use in this project, Adlington’s The Diary of Pelly D, Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker, Ness’s More Than This, and O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours, have been discussed in terms of how they relate to the genre at large and their suitability for the classroom. Whereas Pelly D and Ship Breaker, in terms of language, general level of complexity, and subject matter, are suitable in many types of upper secondary classes, More Than This and Only Ever Yours require more careful thought in terms of which students might benefit from reading them. In the case of
Ness’s novel, this is mainly due to the text’s complexity, and in the case of O’Neill’s novel, it is due to the graphic and brutal content.